


The Serpent in the Jar

by WideTheWaters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Genre: Adult Hermione Granger, Also um written for partner who goaded me because I make him play HP:WU on my phone if I drive, BAMF Hermione Granger, Birth Control, Champagne, Chocolate, Counfoundables, Cozy Cottage in the Woods, Cufflinks, Dirty Talk, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Orgasm, Forest of Dean, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Healer Hermione Granger, Impregnation, Imprisonment, Magical Bathtub, Minister for Magic Hermione Granger, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Ministry of Magic Employee Blaise Zabini, Overworking, POV Hermione Granger, Past Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Porn, Potions Master Hermione Granger, Resurrection, Some Plot, Strawberries, Table Sex, They're the same age in this so it works a lot better for me, Tight Spaces, Time Travel, Vacation, Video Game: Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Voice Kink, Wizards Unite!, Workaholic Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WideTheWaters/pseuds/WideTheWaters
Summary: The Youngest-Ever Minister for Magic's lovely assistant and helpful friends have sent her off for her first vacation since before the Battle of Hogwarts.But of course, an unexpected guest crashes her solitary self-care party.Only now, they may just be able to help each other...
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 51
Kudos: 289
Collections: Harry Potter: Wizards Re-Unite





	The Serpent in the Jar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A Fish Who Betas and Sometimes Plays Games for Me](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=A+Fish+Who+Betas+and+Sometimes+Plays+Games+for+Me).



> CW: non-reverent discussion of conception, birth control, and pregnancy

## 

##  _❧ December, 2019 - Forest of Dean_

Minister for Magic Hermione Granger _deserved_ a break.

She _needed_ a break. 

When had she last been on vacation? Not since before the war - maybe that summer in France with her parents. You know, the ones who now lived in blissful ignorance of her existence so far away that covertly checking up on them involved a Portkey so long-distance it made her nose bleed.

And, well, since then she’d helped win the war. She’d made the world a more safe and equitable place for Magical Beings and Creatures. And she’d become history’s youngest Minister, which was no small achievement for a Muggleborn woman without an ounce of Slytherin political subtlety in her body. 

She had been on a nonstop streak of badassery for literally years. 

And to show for it? Em. A flat. A better world for others in the magical community, and a slightly less bureaucratically deadlocked Ministry. But not even Crookshanks to come home to anymore and frequent confidential consultations with her Healer regarding migraines and the odd ulcer.

And the so-called Calamity would still be there when she returned.

Her assistant had carefully booked her self-catering cottage with nary an embroiled inn, greenhouse, or (Godric forbid) bloody irritating _tower_ in sight. A _lovely_ cottage, all lichen-crusted stone backing to the forest itself with a beautiful little garden around. With a tub to rival the one in the Prefect’s Bath at Hogwarts. With a well-stocked library of Muggle novels _and_ Patented Daydream Charms (including the new _Explicit_ line) _and_ several films she’d missed on DVD. With a fridge full of strawberries and raspberries and chocolate mousse and mangoes and cheese and perhaps some actual balanced meals too. And champagne and sparkling mineral water.

And _no_ Floo connection, _no_ phone or internet, and wards that would close the surrounding several acres to all Apparition within seconds of her arrival - although she could walk to both a magical and a Muggle village from its door. Zabini had sworn up and down that she would have as peaceful a holiday as magically possible.

She had declined to include Aurors within the wards to attempt to dispatch of Foundables near the house, though, so those would continue to intrude, like little jabs at her confidence and intellect, like little gnats buzzing around and laughing in her ears.

But it was as close as she could get. So, gripping her well-packed beaded bag ( _completely_ emptied of anything work related - Harry had searched it for contraband), she turned on the spot and left.

❧

Wow. Alright, this really was lovely. 

Blaise hadn’t mentioned that the garden was full of gently glowing fairies, and their many-colored lights through the flower petals immediately charmed her. Her sensibly shod feet sank into leaf litter and moss just outside the iron gate fitted into the low stone wall, just where she’d landed, as she looked at the little house in the twilight. 

It was just perfect.

And then, of course, a Troll stomped through, somehow balancing on top of the garden wall and trying to dislodge and stomp some flesh-eating slugs that had gotten on him.

It was preposterous; no way in hell should the troll not be crushing the wall. No way in hell should it be coordinated enough to be up there. And then… well, it seemed not to notice her, though the slugs themselves - the missing bit of history, she knew, while the troll itself was just a means to the end of keeping them displaced - seemed curious about both it and her.

She sighed. _“Flipendo!”_

The troll flipped comically, landing somehow in midair just above the ground, then scurried away, dissipating as it went. The slug seemed to look from it to her and laugh before Disapparating. She’d thought she was done after the first 50 of these, but no, no - they still kept coming. 

At least, in such a remote area, intrusions should be relatively infrequent. London these days was an absolute disaster.

The fairies seemed unfussed. 

“Be like the tranquil little tinkerbells, Hermione,” she ground out to herself, opening the gate and trying not to stomp up to the front door. “Let it go. Let all of it go. You can’t solve it single-handed, anyhow.”

❧

Inside, Zabini had left Celestina Warbeck playing, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, and a plate of biscuits, cheeses, and chocolate covered strawberries. The hearth was roaring, and she _could_ open it to traffic if she wanted to - or so reiterated the note from Blaise, which was a last bid for her to consider his offer of sensual massage and relaxation assistance from a discreet and attractive friend. 

Groan. She couldn’t decide if it was more or less considerate than Harry and Ginny always trying to set her up. Goodness knows she could use a good hard shag but it had been, well, an _embarrassingly_ long time, and she was neither the sort to go in for casual hookups nor the sort to put family first. Which was… why it had been since Ron.

 _Well_ , she thought, pouring herself a flute of the Veuve Cliquot, _I brought that vibrator Ginny foisted on me, so maybe I can at least try to treat myself a bit._

Mmm. Demi sec. She made a mental note to make sure the Ministry was paying Blaise enough. 

❧

Three hours later found her pink and perfumed from a long soak and almost through the bottle, dancing around the parlor naked in the candlelight, singing along to a Pat Benatar song. She was using a chocolate covered strawberry as a microphone, and every once in a while laughing at the windows, which despite being uncovered, were completely out of view of any interlopers or paparazzi. 

She was balancing on the back of a sofa belting out “‘Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history - Of breaking little hearts like the one in me - Before I put another notch in my lipstick case - You better make sure you put me in’ - oh fucking Merlin’s saggy _balls_ you have got to be kidding me!”

She swore and stumbled, landing on her ass on the deep-cushioned couch and gaping at a long-dead … ally?

Still sort of looked like an enemy. But… one her age. Or Harry’s, or Ron’s. And that… was _fascinating_.

She just sort of stared for a moment, pensively biting into her erstwhile mic and refilling her flute while he, oblivious to her, attempted to free himself.

He was, of course, smack in the middle of the large parlor’s floor, in an enormous cork-stoppered glass potion bottle. She’d seen it a few times before. Currently, his back was to her, so she laid on her side and watched as he battered at the glass walls then seemed to gather his dignity and think, only to eventually attempt brute force again. 

“Good luck, Snape. It’s nearly a foot thick, that glass,” she called, propping her head up on her hand and smirking. 

She wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear her - she certainly never managed to actually have conversations with any of the foundables. God, she _had_ to come up with less blundering names for these things.

But - slowly, he turned and faced her.

He drew back against the glass wall behind him, clearly startled, as she waved coyly and gave him another wink, polishing off her strawberry.

Then she saw him begin to flush, making an attempt he wasn’t quite succeeding at to look away. Instead, by fits and starts, he looked away, then gazed back at her feet, then glanced up at the cork and mouthed something profane, then let his eyes sweep up her legs. Then, his eyes widening at the dark curls above and between, he reddened markedly and turned around, only to glance over his shoulder a moment later, his eyes raking up her stomach and chest until… he looked absolutely startled at her face.

She thought she saw him mouth “Ms. Granger?!”

She rolled her eyes, standing up saucily with the secure knowledge that, in a few minutes, he’d either disappear or she’d send him back to his own time, none the wiser. Really, how different was _that_ from a patented daydream charm? So she swung her feet to the floor slowly then stood with a big, full-body stretch, letting him get an eye full before she sauntered up to the glass and prodded it with her index finger.

“Look at me now, will you? Didn’t even need to raise a hand _or_ brew the best sodding potion in your class this time, eh? Well. If only I’d known.” Hermione was only vaguely aware that she was slurring a little; she felt _wonderful_ and uninhibited and a little spiteful, both at the intrusion and the man, so she decided to follow this week’s mission statement: _Have fun. No seriousness._

(Harry and Ginny and Blaise had actually made her draft that and repeat it like a mantra for weeks leading up to this. She'd even accidentally answered the Floo thus when Minerva had called, to her horror.)

But that wasn’t fun to think about, so she tossed back her champagne and then gave him a good look at her walking away as she stepped over to bend to refill it.

By the time she’d turned around, he was paying rapt attention to her, his lips parted, his eyes, if possible, even darker than usual.

 _Huh. Hot-blooded after all,_ she thought.

“D’you know?” she asked, striding languorously back toward him, “That immediately after first seeing you, I felt a connection to you? I was a child, but it was my first crush. One you smashed to weeping-in-the-night flinders with how you started treating me virtually the moment I tried to participate in your class.”

The man inside the jar gulped, eyes riveted to her lips, clearly trying to augment what he could hear by reading them. His mouth twitched through an indiscernible series of emotions to hear that, but finally he mouthed, “I’m sorry.” 

“Sorry?! Well, given that I’ve a mastery in potions myself, now, and am the youngest sodding Minister for Magic in History, and that you saved us all by sending my best,” she kicked the glass with her bare foot, _“friend,”_ she kicked again, “to _die_ … it seems a little late for that.”

That had hurt. Hermione slumped against the wall of glass, panting, and lifted up her foot to cast an _Episkey_ on it. 

Snape, it seemed, was having a bit of trouble between trying to respond and trying to rip his eyes away from her breasts, which were pressed naked against the bottle and compressing against the hard clear surface tantalizingly while Hermione struggled to balance. 

Finally she stood, her skin peeling free of the cold hard wall as she stepped back, and she could slightly hear him as he said “What year is this?”

Well, they didn’t seem to remember anything or lose any time, she thought, so she figured it couldn’t hurt. “2019. Congratulations. We killed him, and Harry lived.”

Snape blinked. “He wasn’t a Horcrux?”

Hermione rolled her eyes, planting her fists on her hips. “Yes, he was, but Voldemort killed the Horcruxy bit and Harry came back after. Narcissa Malfoy helped save him, of all things - I suppose you weren’t altogether mad to make that vow to her - yes, I know about it, Draco’s my assistant’s partner, thanks, we have margaritas every Thursday and she told him.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I should probably just send you back. You probably have things to do, and I have very important fun to have, I’ll have you know.”

The potions professor smirked, letting his eyes flick up and down. “Who’s the lucky wizard? Or is it witch?” he said. 

Well, it was Hermione’s turn to blush. “I don’t need one. I’ve got champagne and daydreams and chocolate and I’m too busy saving the world for romance in the patriarchically stunted society wizards left me to try to mop up, thanks!”

His eyebrows went up but he smiled a little. It didn’t look like his usual mocking but she still felt good and mocked. All the same, she realized, they were of an age now, and it was odd how… much he looked like he was just a person, really, after he’d looked unaccountably ancient for a man in his thirties when she was his student. Just a man, tall and dark and intellectual, with that damned roman nose that made her just want to _lick_ it.

“Right, em,” she said, blinking and crossing her legs in some ridiculously late attempt at modesty, “I’ll break you out, and that will send you back, now, alright?”

The smile fell away from Snape’s face slowly and he gave her a resigned shrug.

She cocked her head at him, having been certain he’d want to be far away as fast as humanly possible. “What, not in a rush to go bedevil everyone with your ambiguous moral alignment?”

He pulled his collar to the side, revealing two lurid puncture marks.

 _“Fuck,”_ she breathed.

He arched an eloquent brow and, after thinking for a moment, nodded in agreement.

“So… Nagini’s already bitten you?” she asked.

He nodded.

“And… and have you shared your memories with Harry?”

Again, he nodded.

“So… you were snatched after you stopped breathing, right at the moment before your death - but are in some sort of stasis here.”

He just looked at her.

“Aaaaaah fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck,” she moaned, collapsing onto an ottoman. When she noticed her former professor’s eyes widening, she hastily pressed her thighs closed and crossed her legs at the ankle as the awful feeling of attempting to will herself sober crept over her.

It would probably be an idiotic thing to do. But…

She dug about in the cushions of the couch for her as-yet unpacked bag,

“Well, once a Gryffindor,” she said, cracking her neck to each side and bouncing on her toes a little. “And this _will_ be fun…”

Then, with a crack, she Apparated herself inside the bottle, with Snape.

❧

Severus leapt back, tipping the bottle slightly as he collided with the wall, when she sprang into being beside him.

“Merciful Salazar, Ms. Granger, what have you done?!” he gasped, looking at her now… _reachable_ … body, trapped here inside the glass. 

“Come to pay a visit to a patient,” she replied as brusquely as she could while still slurring slightly. She realized she still had a full glass of champagne and thrust it into his dithering hand. “Here, congratulations - I think you might just live through the battle after all.”

He blinked as his fingers closed automatically around the flute’s stem, glancing at it and then back to her. “And why would that be?”

She shivered a little. Gods, she’d forgotten that voice. It _did things_ , that voice. “Well, in my leisure time early in my career I earned masteries in both potions and healing, and read Biochemistry at Oxford. Somewhere along the way, I thought just for fun, I’d do some tinkering with a sample of Nagini’s venom in case anyone ever needed an antidote again. And,” she said, her arm disappearing to the shoulder in a vaguely familiar beaded handbag, “ever since that year before the battle, I have a tendency of carrying, well, _everything_ I might actually _need_ with me, so…” 

She pulled out a capped, filled medical syringe. “Voila.”

Snape blinked, stunned, as his back slid down the glass wall. “I must say, Ms. Granger, this is not what I anticipated from the afterlife. In fact, I anticipated nothing - nothing at all.”

Hermione gazed down at him, still wielding the syringe. “Well, I haven’t died, Professor, so I think you may just need to consider the possibility that, by dint of a ridiculous magical calamity, you’re here in the future and I happen to be able to save your life.”

“I hardly think, _Minister_ , as we now appear to be of the same age and you have surpassed my professional accomplishments in every way, that you need persist in addressing me as... _professor.”_

She waggled an eyebrow at him. “Would you prefer Severus, darling? Or shall we perhaps get to the part where I stab you with this needle and we see about a friendly little change to history?”

He blinked at her again. “My gods, how the years have ripened you. I suppose you’d have me call you… _Hermione.”_

She swallowed to hear her given name on his lips. She wasn’t certain she’d ever heard it said in anything approaching that register, and his voice had dropped it down, even for him, to a disconcertingly velvety depth. “I’d prefer you start getting undressed so we can get on with this,” she finally replied.

His brows quirked, his mouth pursing toward a moue of surprise. 

“Em… call me what you’d like, only, I need you topless, now, please.” 

He stood, his eyes fiery on hers as he started to shrug out of his outer robes, which dropped to the ground behind him. 

She blinked, sputtering a moment before she could form words, watching his long fingers cleverly undo his cufflinks. “It’s… for the injection.”

He slowed, his hands now midway through working down the buttons of his inner jacket. “Oh?” He shrugged this jacket off, now, fingers working at the knot of his cravat.

“I’ll have to, em,” she bit her lip, watching him work down the buttons of his white-collared black shirt. “I’ll have to draw a circle and some runes over your chest with charcoal and then inject this directly into your heart.”

His eyes flickered again to the syringe, which did indeed look to be the sturdy sort that could punch through to that depth. “I see.”

Her eyes were tracing the progress of his hands, which had reached low enough to part his shirt to his naval. She blinked at the tented placket of his trousers immediately before it was covered when he untucked his shirt. “Huh?” she asked distractedly.

He smirked. “Mi… _Hermione_ , do I miss my guess, or is what you propose to do to me a rather dangerous experimental combination of magical and Muggle medical techniques?”

She blinked up at his face, regaining focus. “No, you’re quite correct - although, frankly, I’m glad I haven’t had to test it.”

He nodded. “And… you were, if I am not mistaken, alone and romancing yourself this evening, on an enforced vacation from your predictably high-pressure job, and you’ve had a fair bit of this,” he tossed back the wine, which he’d managed to hold through all that unbuttoning, “rather good champagne?”

She remembered she was naked briefly and then pushed the thought away. “So? You won’t remember any of this. You may yet die, _Severus_ ,” she said, dipping her tongue into each syllable and seeing him stifle a shiver of his own. “And there’s nothing wrong with my body, so if it’s the last thing you see, it seems uncharitable to cover it now.”

His eyes burned over her, making no effort at all to disguise the examination. “There is, in fact, everything _right_ with your body, Hermione,” he murmured darkly as his hands started to work at the buckle of his belt. He paused to toss his head in a brusque nod. “I imagine you have sobriety draughts in that little bag of yours. Why don’t you take one, please, as my life and death alike are on the line?”

She nodded, confused but certain this was a good idea. “Em, alright.” She pointed her wand into the bag. “ _Accio!”_ she muttered, the potion flying readily into her hand. 

Snape eyed it critically as he pulled the belt from its loops, toeing off his black Oxfords at the same time. “Well-brewed, of course, though perhaps a bit old.”

She shrugged, gulping it down and waiting for it to take effect. “You try my job, see how often you can get trollied. It’s been… five years?” She shook her head, making a face at the foul aftertaste and summoning a halitosis brew. “Don’t ever let the Bulgarian delegation pour the wine,” she muttered darkly, downing the second phial. 

When she looked back at Snape, inebriation peeling back from her senses like diaphanous veils, it was to see his thumbs hitched to the sides of the still-bulging placket of his trousers, which gaped slightly at the top button, already undone over a trail of course, black hair that thickened as it led down.

“Oh dear,” she said, her voice suddenly small.

Snape looked at her inscrutably, “Hermione, did you know that I was soulbound to a Muggleborn witch?”

Silently, she shook her head, taking a small step back. 

He nodded. “Almost no one did. I asked one of the school’s elves to check, once I suspected it, of course. As beings who live or die by magical bonds, they have an unerring sensitivity to their presence, one spellwork by wizards cannot match.”

She blinked up at him as he took a step toward her. At some point, he’d taken off his socks. She’d missed that.

“She was beautiful - the most beautiful witch of her age. And eager to prove herself, and clever, hardworking, _crafty_ , and had an incredible power and a knack with magic, and a good heart, and the will to show others compassion and the will to stand against evil. She was becoming _exquisite_ , but I knew I’d be gone before she became the woman I’d want, and I. Couldn’t. Have her.” He took another step.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Hermione breathed, her shoulder blades brushing the cold glass.

He shook his head. “It couldn’t be helped. When I became aware, it was only, perhaps, a little more than a year ago, by my own reckoning, and larger things were at stake, but I never thought… I never thought that such a potential for connection in the world would belong to _me.”_ He mouthed these last words hungrily, taking another slow step toward her.

Something about what he was saying was wrong, she knew, but she was struggling to place it - he was standing _so_ close.

His hands fell forward onto the glass, caging her from the sides as he leaned to her ear and breathed, “So, _Hermione_ , if I may be dead, or if I may die, I’d like to take what’s _mine_ before I go.”

And then, he was on her.

❧

She had looked at his lips before - she had difficulty imagining any teenaged pupil with the least attraction to the masculine hadn’t, as expressive as they were in his otherwise stony face - but feeling them on hers… this she was utterly unprepared for. 

That coupled with the heat of his smooth-muscled chest pressing against hers, and his hands grasping her waist to pull her to him, had her whimpering around the ardent thrusts of his tongue. 

When his hands slipped down to her hips, pulling her forward as he ground the evidence of his arousal hard against her, he pulled back with a parting peck. Hovering close and watching her eyes. “May I?”

She blinked, bewildered and startled but also burning and _wet_. “May you…?”

“May I _have_ you, Hermione?” He nipped at her lower lip, rolling his hips against hers. “It is, after all, your only chance to fuck _your_ soulmate, too.”

Something in the back of her mind jumped up and down and insisted she get him to say the word _fuck_ again as many times as humanly possible so that it could burn the sound into her memory. She simply stared at him, brown eyes blinking, speechless.

“Yes?” he asked, the word raising coyly at the end as one hand crept between them and palmed her breast, pinching its nipple toward a transcendent sort of pain.

Her eyes fluttering closed for a second only to re-open and see him still there against her, she nodded.

 _“Good.”_ he breathed, then started kissing his way down her neck.

❧

He’d left her breasts battered and raw and aching in his wake as he descended, terrorizing every inch of her with pleasure. Every kiss seemed half-fated to turn into a lurid love bite against her sweat-slick skin, and she wasn’t sure her nipples would ever again cease to be so hard they _hurt_. 

And now, having bruised her navel with the hard, suggestive thrusts of his tongue, he was nearing a new frontier.

That licentious nose of his pressed into her damp curls, and his low groan vibrated through her. “By Merlin, I don’t _want_ to die,” he moaned, his tongue flicking out to taste her.

She tensed in shock at the sensation, her breathing hitching has his hands spread her outer lips to the whims of his wicked mouth. 

He first dipped into her, an exploratory step into a forgotten cavern she trembled for him to fill.

Then, licking and sucking along the agonizingly slow way up, those lips closed around her throbbing clit, and she swore she would just _expire_. 

Before her knees could give out entirely, he pressed her back hard to the glass and swept her thighs up astride his shoulders, leaving her seated with his face pressed into her. In the motion, though, he’d noticed her tension, and he pulled back now to look up at her - though not so much that his lips didn’t brush her most sensitive cluster of nerves with his every breath or word.

“Hermione. Are you alright?”

She looked down, gasping for air, and wondered at the look of concern as it manifested on this particular canvas. Finally, she came to herself sufficiently to nod slightly, feeling the flush spread across her cheeks. “I haven’t… no one’s ever…”

He blinked up at her slowly, clearly surprised. “Do you wish me to stop?”

She shook her head so adamantly that he chuckled softly around her, sending a shiver up her body. 

“Then,” he said, punctuating the space between words with a long, slow lick, “Why don’t you tell me a bit about what you have and haven’t done while I taste you, so that we can both be prepared for what’s to come?”

Breathlessly, haltingly, she did. She was concentrating so hard on accounting for herself fully despite his ministrations that she didn’t realize until after she’d done it when she dropped the whiz-bang, though she saw it ignite in his eyes. He looked… angry.

 _“Never?”_ he asked. “You mean to tell me that you have _never…?”_

“N-no,” she said, eyes downcast as her thighs shifted on his shoulders.

He growled. “If I live, I’ll _throttle_ Weasley.” Even as his voice grew harsh, though, his hands ran gently over her torso, almost as if reassuring a spooked animal, or checking a loved one for wounds. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised…” 

He shook his head slightly, having now thoroughly pulled back from her, leaving her feeling slightly dejected but also certain he was attending to her words and emotional state. He had not, at least, pulled her from his shoulders.

“Do you enjoy being touched, Hermione?” He asked, voice soothing and low.

She squirmed a little, “Was that not evident?”

He smiled up at her, stroking down her back. “Some pretend. And I would never look into your mind uninvited.” 

She had to admit that she, a) hadn’t thought of that disturbing possibility, and, b) was relieved to hear it.

“Hermione,” he said, slowly, ponderously as he gathered the rest of his words, “May I try to rectify this egregious injustice for you? You plan to try to give me life - I would like, at least, to grant you a little death - a release.” His long fingers kneaded at the knots of her upper back. “May I?”

She looked down at him. “Yes, Severus. Although… I’ve tried. If… if I just can’t… please know that I still enjoy this.”

He nodded, taking her quite seriously. “Agreed. However…” he drew in a breath as his hands drew down along her sides, “Please know that you are physically _perfect;_ I see no reason why, even if our time together is too short, this isn’t something you could ultimately rectify. It is not uncommon among women, and I can only imagine the extreme stress and anxiety of your life have made it all the more difficult for you.”

She mustered a little smirk. “Perfect? Are you a master of sexual anatomy, then, too?”

He smirked right back, lowering his lips to her again. “Yes.”

She blinked, eyes popping wide. _“Oh.”_

“You see, Hermione,” he rumbled, letting his lips and tongue graze her whenever they ventured near as he spoke, _“this,”_ he said as he thrust a finger up into her, leaving her gasping at its hard heat within, “this and the various other parts of you it works in tandem with, particularly the _mind,_ ” he said, starting to thrust the finger in and out of her, “make perhaps the most perfect cauldron.”

She was too transfixed to try to turn this into a jest as he paused to suck at her, torturously pulling at her pulsing nub. 

“Your Weasley was no potioneer, but… in the correct hands,” he added a finger, “here can be created lust,” he nipped at her, “life,” his tongue swept a circuit around her, “and perhaps even _love_ , if you are but patient, and know how to _stir_ them forth.”

And with that lesson, he buried himself in his task.

❧

After an hour of torturous pleasure, she felt her heart and body had been flayed in a series of near misses and unutterable brinks. But Severus continued on.

She fought a feeling that she would simply fall apart. She was so grateful and so frustrated she could just about cry. And it still felt… it still felt _exquisite._

“Let yourself, Hermione,” he crooned into her as her legs jumped in little involuntary flinches and tremors. “I’ve got you. Yield control, and let it happen. I will not let you come to harm, will not adore you any less for anything that may happen.”

 _Maybe…_ She considered his words and her struggle to hold herself together. 

She looked down at his large, dark eyes, letting herself sink into the crooks of his fingers as he beckoned inside her. And, seeing his eyes widen as she let her own flutter closed, she just… let go.

And slammed her head back into the glass, screaming as her back pulled into a taut arch and something inside her imploded.

❧

By the time she felt coherent again, he had pulled her into his arms and wrapped his outer robes around her, though his skin still pressed directly to hers where he held her. He was making soothing nonsense sounds, stroking down her bare back under the cloth.

“Clever, clever, good girl, Hermione, sshhhhhh, there, there, you’ve found it, it was in you all along, and you’ll never lose it again. Ssshhhh, sssshhhh.”

She realized that her cheeks were cold because they were damp with tears. She really _had_ cried.

Then, she ducked her head down to kiss him, pouring all her confusion and elation and exhaustion and her awkward, budding affection into her mouth on his.

When she pulled back several minutes later, he was breathless. _“Hermione,”_ he breathed.

“Me?” she asked. “Me, and not Lily?”

He shook his head, “She… she was my best, my only friend. And I thought… well, perhaps it was because she was so much like you, in a way. So very, very like you, but without the tiny thread of darkness and pain I think makes us a truer match. She… she was the first person I ever truly loved, Hermione, but not… not like this. It took me years to know it, but not like this.”

His hands stroked little circles along her neck and shoulders as he spoke. 

After their eyes had locked together for what seemed to have been ages passed in silence, she nodded. “Then I believe you have work yet to do before I try to cure you, Severus.”

His brow creased in concern, “Hermione, had I known that you hadn’t… I know… I know that _that_ , what just passed between us, was an ordeal for you as much as anything pleasurable. I would never take more than you could give, certainly not after that.”

She smiled, tugging on the hair at the nape of his neck with a jarring sharpness. After watching him startle at this, she spoke slowly. “Do you presume to know how much I can give, Severus?” He shook his head slowly, his eyes not leaving hers. “And would you rob me of my only chance to _fuck_ my soulmate?”

His eyes rolled back and he threw her down in the heap of his discarded clothes, grabbing the syringe from beside her head and shoving it back into her bag before he pushed his trousers just low enough on his legs and then, throwing her thighs wide with his implaccable hands, thrust into her.

She arched up under him in ecstasy, crying out as he braced his feet against the wall of the jar, one hand looping under her back to the far shoulder and the other bracing against the jar’s opposite side before he set about his rough repast.

❧

“Severus,” she squeaked, thrusting her hips up in perfect counterpoint against him.

“Mmmm.” he sighed, nipping at her shoulder.

She gnawed at her lower lip as she looked down at him, sweat-sparkling and resplendent in the candlelight through the glass. “Talk to me.”

His sinful lips slowly rose from her shoulder and curved into a lascivious smile. “Hermione,” he said, his hips pounding down into her, “Would you like me to tell you about how it feels to fuck you?”

She shuddered, mewling under him, managing to pry her eyes open to look at him with a silent _yes._

His chuckle was rich and deep. “It feels incredible. You’re hot, and wet, and tight, barely shy of _too_ tight, as if you were made entirely for me.”

There were new colors to the sensations of his cock pushing in and then dragging out of her as she listened, lulled by his magnificent voice and thrusting attentions. 

“And when you came under my mouth, Hermione, you tasted… god, of salt and musk and every thick and sublime power words shudder to encapsulate. You also taste like… mine. And so beautiful. Orchids weep, love, around the world, to contemplate how they shall never compare to the salacious folds of your dripping pink cunt.” 

Just thinking about it made him lose himself in a volley of sharper, harder thrusts for some minutes, leaving them both crying out at every staccato beat.

“And _fucking_ you… do you like it, when I say that, Hermione? I’m fucking you. Severus Snape is fucking Hermione Granger. I am, this instant, penetrating your hot little slit again and again with my big, hard cock, and I feel you shaking to stretch big enough to hold me, and I hear your little pants and whimpers, Hermione, and it makes me want to _fuck_ you harder. And I will. You won’t stop me, love, because you, Hermione, love it when I _fuck_ you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, squirming beneath him, feeling again as if on the edge of a long drop.

He smiled down at her, and, sensing it, bit her shoulder sharply. “Well, Hermione, I know what you like. You like what _I_ like. You were made for me, and I, for you. So I’m going to fuck you, just as I like, and you, when I tell you you may, will be a good girl and come for me.”

Her eyes flew open in shock. “I…”

“Ssssshhhh.” He cut her off with a little kiss. “Let me fuck you, now. You like that, when I fuck you.”

She moaned. She _did_ like it. So much.

And then, with reserves she was amazed he had, he laid into her, pounding fully in and almost fully out of her on every thrust and release, pushing her legs up at such an angle that he rang some sonorous note deep in her with every sharp pang. His speed and the strength he was expending seemed to treble, and she couldn’t… she was going to… oh god, he was breaking her apart…

 _“Now,”_ his voice resounded.

“Severus!” she screamed, the world whiting out as she came around him.

And he followed her fast over the edge, crying “Hermione!”

❧

She lay on top of him, and he’d draped his outer robes over her sweat-drenched, cooling form like a blanket. If when he was pulled from here it smelled like her now, he would die a happier man.

Or would he?

Finally, she struggled upright, straddling his hips as she pulled her wand and bag over, summoning a charcoal pencil. Then, she bent to draw, just barely left of the center of his chest.

When he, thoroughly aroused by the site of her studiously tickling him with her work, ground up into her, she squeaked and slid forward, leaving him flopping woefully in the air with a little disgruntled _umpf._

She smirked down at him. “Enough of that. I have to concentrate.”

He smiled wanly up at her. “My dear, I do not think I will ever have _enough_ of that.”

She smacked his hands away from her hips as he tried to slide her lower. “If we can after, I’ll _fuck_ you until I collapse.”

“Ah,” he said, smirking up at her as she tried valiantly to focus. “Hermione, I wonder: would it help you concentrate for me to list all the various words for things I wish to do to you in bed?”

She smirked, eyes still on her work. “If it amuses you.”

He smiled pillowing the back of his head with his interwoven hands as he gazed up at her. He was not insensible of the potency of his voice.

“It does,” he said slowly, pausing to lick his lips, knowing she could see peripherally however hard she attempted to concentrate. 

“But it would please me, Hermione, so much more, to copulate with you. To bed you. To screw you right down into that table, there,” he said, succeeding in getting her to look over her shoulder toward the dining room. “To mount you. Lie with you. Diddle you. To pound and poke and plough and pump you. Perhaps, to bang you. Certainly to drill you, to know you, to lay you, to penetrate you. And of course to lick and kiss and bite and suck and gnaw and stroke and slap and stretch you.”

He could feel the wetness pooling on his skin as it dripped from her, and he smiled. 

“Shall I couple with you, Hermione? Sleep with you? Shag you or … make love to you?”

She shivered and kept drawing. She was all but sliding over him in her own wet but she was nearly there, and she wanted him to live to do everything, now, especially to her.

“Shall I teach you, too? Shall I dominate you? Sodomize or bugger you? Shall I perform cunnilingus on you? Tie you and bind you? Shall I, Hermione, inch my fist and forearm up into you? Would you I punished, humiliated, or praised you? Shall I crawl for you, or may I spank you? Paddle you? Suspend you? May I cover you with cream and lave you clean?”

She narrowed her eyes and the syringe flew into her hand, silently and wandlessly as her hair crackled with magic. “All of it. We’ll try all of it. But first - you’ll _watch_ me.”

And, without warning, she stabbed the needle down.

❧

He’d cried out and gasped when the needle plunged into his heart. And then… everything went strange. 

His _neck_ hurt again, it burned, but…. But coursing through his veins was ice going to meet it. 

Hermione scrambled off him, expression grum but resolute as she threw the syringe into the bag and cast cushioning charms all around him before trying to hold his head and arms still. His nails dug into his palms as he cried out again, eyes streaming. 

It would hurt so much less, he thought, to die.

But he didn’t.

And then, the strangest thing happened - right from around them both, the bottle vanished, somehow leaving them both disoriented, ears ringing and bodies sagging, until they fell together unconscious.

❧

It was light when she woke, and she lay on something warm… and breathing.

She blinked in shock. This… this had never happened. And they’d tried - tried to pull those they’d lost out.

Beneath her, she felt him stir, and when she raised her eyes in wonder, she saw _his_ , dark and gazing back at her.

“I’m… alive,” he said, voice softened by his awe.

“You’re still _here,”_ she breathed, running her hands up his chest to examine the wound on his neck. 

It had scarred over into two paler raised dots. 

Also, his jaw was darker than it had been yesterday. “You’re… you’re changing. You’re not in stasis anymore. Maybe… The cure. You are too different and… and I was of the present and held open the door.”

He blinked, raising his hand to the stubble on his chin when he saw the direction she was looking. "I can't believe… wait… or did… it can't be, certainly, but," pulling his wand from among his discarded clothes, he cast a quiet charm over her.

And then gulped, looking up at her. "Hermione, you… you have time, yet, for an anti-implantation charm, but… I've sparked a change in _you_ , too." Slowly hesitantly, he lowered his palm to cup the small round jut of her belly, his eyes flickering up to hers. 

She gaped back. "I'm _pregnant_ _?"_

He shivered. "Not… exactly, not yet. But please - careful, Hermione. Mine isn't the only voice that can stir bodies into action."

She thought and decided to try to stick to the mission. That was a notion to consider more reverently later, but now... " _Impregnating_ me, Severus?" she teased, rocking suggestively atop him. "Would you like to have _fucked_ a _baby_ into me? Has a _serpent_ stung Hermione Granger?"

With a snarl he stood, picking her up in the same motion and not quite setting her on her feet, but holding her tight and dangling down along the height of him. "That remains to be seen, as you have a day, perhaps, to cast the charm, and I'm uncertain I'm ready to _share_ you. But you _are_ mine, so for now - is there perhaps a bed for me to ravage you in? Or shall I bend you over the table before I lose my mind?"

She looked up at him, her own voice low. "The table is closer. We'll find the bed eventually."

And so, with a little hiss, he threw her over it, pressing her cheek firmly to the polished wood before he sank into her with an impatient hunger. As she relished the bite of the table's edge across her hips, bruising a little with each of his deliciously rough thrusts, she wondered if pleasure, for her, could ever not be a grave business. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this worked. It's possible I should have gone for more comedic but I think if I had Severus might've had an allergic reaction. Snamione or Sevmione or what you will is not my fav ship but I was provoked into this and wanted to see if I could do it. I hope there's someone out there looking for just such a thing who enjoys.


End file.
